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Indlæser... The Migrant Painter of Birds (1998)af Lídia Jorge
Indlæser...
Bliv medlem af LibraryThing for at finde ud af, om du vil kunne lide denne bog. Der er ingen diskussionstråde på Snak om denne bog. A young woman tries to piece together a coherent picture of her father from two childhood visits, other people's stories, and the few mementos he left behind. This is a very slow read with a plethora of threads from different time periods woven together in a less than direct manner to form a nebulous whole. It's interesting to see how the narrator's mind moves and how she folds events together to match some previously undiscovered fact, but it's sometimes difficult to follow along in the flow. What I'm mainly left with after reading is a profound understanding of "Saudade," the melancholic longing that so defines the Portuguese people and even if I am not a huge fan of the work itself, I am very grateful to have gotten such an insight into a mood that was previously a mere dictionary definition for me, especially since I read a lot of Portuguese fiction that tends to include at least some of this (for me) peculiar nostalgia. ( )
Jorge fails to convey the sort of mystery and complexity that Walter refers to when he notes that ''birds had thousands of feathers in layers, which we knew were there but couldn't see.'' This is a fascinating story about public guilt and tyranny in an oppressive society, and how a child, hurt into silence and isolation by the sinful circumstances of her birth, clings to her idealised father for love, but is eventually consumed by the same anger that has been cast upon her.
The setting of this extraordinary novel is an old farmhouse in Portugal - a house far enough from the Atlantic not to hear the breaking waves during a storm but near enough for the walls to be corroded by the salt in the air.With most members of her large family having left the hardship of life in this landscape of sand and stone for jobs in faraway places, a young woman struggles to piece together her past from the many and differing stories she is told. Left behind by a free-spirited, feckless father, a seducer with a talent for drawing, she is raised by her uncle who has married her mother. The only memories of her father's one brief visit are the echoes of his footsteps on the stairs leading to her room. The only signs of him are letters from the widest reaches of the world- letters accompanied by brilliantly coloured drawings of exotic birds- the cuckoo from India, the ibis from Mozambique, the goose from Labrador, the hummingbird from the West Indies. The daughter longs for her father and, as she grows up, she is determined to find him and uncover the truth.Beautifully written and imagined, this strikingly lyrical novel evokes the atmosphere of a rural community in a changing world and explores the timeless themes of family, independence, and the often painful experience of emigration. No library descriptions found. |
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Google Books — Indlæser... GenrerMelvil Decimal System (DDC)869.342Literature Spanish and Portuguese Portuguese Portuguese fiction 20th Century 1945-1999LC-klassificeringVurderingGennemsnit:
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